Podcast: All About TIFF, Our Festival Takeaways
Sunday, September 15, 2013 at 7:29PM 
For this week's podcast, a special Toronto International Film Festival edition. Your regular players Nathaniel, Katey and Nick welcome Tim Robey from the Daily Telegraph and Angelo Muredda from Film Freak Central to discuss our experiences at this year's TIFF. We cover festival favorites like the joyful experiment Strange Little Cat, super-lengthy documentary At Berkeley and Clio Barnard's follow up to The Arbor, The Selfish Giant and spend time with 12 Years a Slave which blew (most of) our minds. (It also blew the TIFF audience's mind and took home the coveted People's Choice prize, that Oscar bellwether, with Philomena in second place)
We also hit mainstream titles like the Daniel Brühl pictures Rush and The Fifth Estate. No one really liked Labor Day which Angelo calls "my summer of erotic pies" and which reminds us uncomfortably of previous Kate Winslet projects. Some slightly more divisive experiences include the sci-fi wow of Gravity, Jafar Panahi's Closed Curtain, the erotic thrillers Stranger by the Lake and Eastern Boys, animation giant Sylvain Chomet's first live action feature Attila Marcel, as well as two doppelganger movies The Double &. Enemy starring Jesse Eisenberg & Jake Gyllenhaal respectively.
Mixed in with these pre-release screening buzz-discussions there's plenty to chew on in terms of Oscar's Best Foreign Film category including possible entries from Singapore (Ilo Ilo), Romania (Child's Pose), Chile (Gloria) and Cambodia (The Missing Picture). And, last but not least our panel loves Jonathan Glazer's long awaited Birth follow up Under the Skin (starring Scarlett Johansson) and offers up advice for any readers who'd like to go to TIFF next year.
Clockwise from top left: Strange Little Cat, Gloria, Gravity, Eastern Boys, and 12 Years a Slave
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes.
(I tried something new in the processing / uploading so let me know if the sound is okay and how it compares to other weeks)
Reader Comments (22)
This is great! Also, the sound is actually a lot better than previous podcasts.
Yesss! Just in time to brighten up my Monday morning work shift of tedium!
Although I haven't seen 12 Years a Slave, I will forgive the Brad Pitt cameo since he produced it and McQueen largely credits for helping the movie get off the ground. The others though.... Yeah, I can imagine from some of the descriptions that I heard. Then again, almost none of the major TV character cameos in Zero Dark Thirty did not take me out (except Gandolfini, that was a little too much but he killed his most important line-reads).
Yay as always!
Speaking of expectations at TIFF: Palo Alto, I was not expecting anything really. I only picked it because it was the only movie that morning not off-sale and I ended up loving it so much and cannot stop thinking/talking about it to people. I really hope it gets distribution soon.
Off topic Nat, were you around Conrad today? I just arrived in NYC from Bejing this noon, and right after I got off the car next to my apartment, which is in front of Conrad, the first person I saw looks exactly like you. Well I only met you once but still, I hope it was not a hallucination since I was reading your blog on my ipad before getting out of the car.
joy -- that was probably me. I was doing interviews in the conrad today for 12 years a slave.
Loving these weekly podcasts. Really brightens up the film year to hear people who are so excited to talk about all these things.
Just because you asked about the sound: The quality seemed a little better at some points, but there were definite sections of the podcast where there is an ... echo I guess you could describe it. Like, it sounds like someone is listening to the podcast a few seconds behind and we can hear it too. Does that make sense? Picks up in the middle during the 12 Years a Slave discussion mostly. Maybe that's not what you meant. Anyway, wasn't a big distraction. Wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise.
Terrific stuff guys. I missed Joe and liked Angelo and Tim. Well done.
Are the old podcasts from the blogspot site not available anymore?
Lisa -- they dont appear to me. it used to be that itunes kept all the old ones but now it seems that you can only access the ten most recent so every time a new one is posted another one disappears.not sure why
Great podcast! But I have a question - why did you cover the TIFF so sporadically. I wish you wrote about it more.
Daniel B -- omg. I've been kiling myself writing about it what do you mean. I wrote like 12 articles in a week on it ???
Lol - we never get enough!
Thanks everyone for the podcast. It was great to have some new voices.
Nat, James is right. We never get enough :))) I just love your witty humour and probably wanted you to clone yourself and go to every showing :) AND I secretly hoped you'd write smth about The Railway Man.
I haven't downloaded the podcast so I don't know if you've seen it or not, but since you mentioned it in the post --
Did you see Ilo Ilo? I'm an Australian living in Singapore and I LOVED it. Probably the finest piece of Singaporean cinema that I've seen, so sensitive and honest, and superbly performed.
Every time I see a picture of Scarlett in Under the Skin, I imagine her throwing a plate and screaming, "I want MY son back!!!"
daniel & james -- the railway man is the only thing i didn't write about. I have guilt. I kept changing my mind about what i wanted to say. i shall try to squeeze something in but i'm kind of waiting on some sort of news about weinstein's plans
andrew -- i missed the Ilo Ilo screening i intended to make it to but Nick and Tim saw it and discuss it briefly on the podcast (Nick really liked it)
Andrew - A few short words on Ilo Ilo, which I loved, is included in my roundup that will be posted tomorrow(?). I think that film has a great shot at an Oscar nomination actually.
Seeing the title "Ilo Ilo" made me think that it was a Filipino film. If it does get nominated it would be nice to see afilm with ties to the Philippines (albeit small) be in the Oscar race.
Yay, this one was so educational on top of having two lovely equally-as-articulate guests along for the ride. I could've listened to another hour of this, honestly, since TIFF only bears gifts once a year.
Also, I wanted ya'll to go into a deep discussion about Under The Skin since it seems so mysterious, alluring and amazingly-directed based on that teaser alone. But really, I just wanna see that rainbow as fast as I can -- the overall positive buzz from the two fests has me salivating!